


However Long

by QuillHeart



Category: Lupin III
Genre: Adulting, But Somehow Not a Total Sad Fest, F/M, Fujiko's Not a Bitch, Lupin Has A Good Heart, POV Third Person Limited, Tasteful fanservice, Unresolved Romantic Tension, amor fati, relationship angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-02
Updated: 2017-07-02
Packaged: 2018-11-22 13:03:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,068
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11380755
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QuillHeart/pseuds/QuillHeart
Summary: One night in bed, Lupin has a somber conversation with Fujiko.





	However Long

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote Het? In this fandom? Shocking.
> 
> Also of note: Lupin actually got some?? Even more shocking.

* * *

 

The Mediterranean air was cool as it ghosted over the coast, up the balcony, and into the room.  It rustled the long curtains, whispering of faraway shores as it did. But here and now against Lupin’s skin, his lover was warm.  Fujiko lay against his chest, front-to-front, both of them completely nude in the dark, intimate hours of the late-night hotel room.

Lupin gazed out the cliffside suite’s open French doors and their view of a moonlit sea, then down at his partner, his rival, his paramour.

The by-now-so-familiar curves of her as she lay, a single sheet draping over her form: Her hips, her thighs, her shoulders, her twined feet.  The soft ringlets of hair he gently stroked his hand down.  All of it was her, and nights like these, all of it was his—to have, to hold, to admire.

Until she made him regret it, but that was part of the fun, wasn’t it?  Taming the lioness…

But tonight, his mind was occupied with other things.  For some time now, Fujiko had been dozing serenely with her cheek on his chest, while he’d been mindlessly gazing at the part in her hair, watching her move up and down slightly with his breath.

“Fujicakes,” he finally murmured, tilting his head a little.  “You awake?”

“Mm?” she mumbled after a moment.  She didn’t open her eyes; didn’t move at all, really.  But the acknowledgement of wakefulness was all he was looking for.  He paused, staring at the dark ceiling and its gossamer bug net, floating in the breeze like a trail of half-remembered dreams.

“Can you promise me something?” he asked that ceiling.

“Maybe,” she trilled, turning her head under his heavy palm.  Her head rested on the other cheek now, but still made no move to look at him.  He couldn’t see her face.

“Hey, I’m trying to be serious here…”

She huffed, a hot, delicate breath on cool skin, but in the end she offered him a shrug, shoulders heavy and slow with the force of sweaty skin sticking to sweaty skin.  “Depends on what it is.”

Still staring at the ceiling, Lupin took a breath that lingered in his lungs; the words didn’t want to come.  But she waited for him; dosing or patient though, he couldn’t tell.

“When this is all over,” he eventually began, “when you and I…change.  Promise me you’ll still be my friend.”

“…Mn?” He couldn’t see it, but he suspected Fujiko’s brow of quirking down. He could see her lips do so when he looked, and against his abs, he caught her fingers twitch once.  “What makes you say that?”

“I was just…thinking, you know?” he hurried on, uncharacteristically flustered.  “I like you, and I would…miss you.”

Before he could make a bigger fool of himself, she smiled just a bit in the moonlight under auburn locks and suddenly shifted.  It felt like a labor after how they’d been lazing, practically melded together, but she did it for him anyway:

Fujiko lifted, then came back down to Earth with a toss of her head to rest both elbows on either side of his chest. Familiar with the landscape of his body as she was, she casually interlaced her fingers on his pectorals and rested her chin on the back of her hands. As he watched, her hair spilled to either side of her—of them—like swirling rivers, sticking to the landscape of his flesh and hers. 

Her clever eyes took some time to look over his face in the silver light, but he couldn’t muster anything defensive to meet them with. Unlike the usual, Lupin’s gaze held no parry of offhand emotion; no quip of defiant wit nor hard-eyed smiles.  At times like this—intimate moments too late at night, too long alone with his thoughts—there was only ever truth in his eyes when he looked upon her, whether he liked it or not.

But as he looked for solace in her face and acceptance in her eyes, he found that she had not yet descended into that safe, warm place she so often brought him to.  Perhaps she was never going to.  Had he ever seen her do that, in fact?

But that was part of the reason he was bringing this up, wasn’t it? 

“What’s got you feeling insecure tonight, lover?” she asked lightly, a ghost of a frown on her lips as she waited for him.

“Well I just…that is…” He looked around—at the curtain, the lamp, her, the ceiling—his fingers tapping anxiously where they lay on her lower back all the while.  “It just…feels different lately, doesn’t it?”

He didn’t look at her as he said this, but in the end, he did.  And it was a mix of embarrassed, anxious, and apologetic.

Fujiko raised an eyebrow.  “Are you asking me to still sleep with you even if I don’t like you anymore?”

His mouth flopped into an O.  “No!”

His lover chuckled and rolled over onto her back, into the space next to him.  She held up her arms to the ceiling like she was inspecting them, touching them ever so delicately, reverentially. Lupin rolled over onto his side to observe the display.

“Do you like this?” she asked, eyes flicking over to him dangerously.

His gaze was dark and sultry as he watched, as much appreciative as deciphering. “Yes.”

“And this?” She touched her breasts, smirking.

“Hmm, quite.” He licked his lips and his nearest hand unconsciously walked itself over her stomach.

“And this?” She touched her hair, even as her abs tightened under his touch.  “And this and this?”  She pulled his errant hand down between her thighs, and a moment later leaned over and pulled him into a deep kiss.

All replies were cut off after that, other than his moans and her gasps and the shifting of sheets.

When they both came up for air, Lupin found himself hanging above her, legs on either side of her hips.  The sheet hung around his waist, threatening to fall; his weight rested on his forearms, nearly lost in the voluminous bedding around her head.  Between his legs, he was getting all warm again.

“Yes and yes,” he finally whispered, looking at her softly from the new vantage point.

The night was quiet; the space between them warm and the look in her eyes understanding.  She reached up to give him another kiss, hand sliding over the stubble on his jaw.

“Then there’s nothing to worry about, is there.” The kind light in her eyes snuffed out and she instantly turned onto her side, effectively putting her back to him.

Despite this display, the tender touch of her hand lingered on into the nighttime, tingling against his face.

“Fuj…” he sighed lovingly, tiredly, rolling downward until he snuggled up against her bare back, spooning her protectively.  “It’s not like that….”

“Then what is it?” she snipped, hands pulling to her chest defensively.  “And stop that.” She swatted at his hip.

“I’m not trying to,” he clarified, pulling her hips against his just to stop the errant friction.

“You’re terrible.”

“I’m a man, I come with external erogenous parts.”

She chuckled, and he smiled into her hair, his eyes closed.  Around them, the sounds and smells of the clean shore drifted, refreshing the silvery darkness.

Lupin hummed.  Her hair smelled like fragrant flowers; it floated over him as he nosed through it to kiss the back of her hot neck.  But even touch after touch, emotional tumbler after tumbler twisting and lifting for him, she remained tense.

In the end, he left her alone and just lay against her, feeling Fujiko’s heartbeat under his hands and giving the lock that was her heart time to open itself.

“I guess…I just don’t know what you mean,” she offered after several breaths and many more beats.

“I don’t…either, really,” he admitted hurriedly a few seconds later.  His voice was honest and bare and he didn’t like it.  But it was what he had, and in a way, he was glad that if it must come out that way, it did it for her and no one else.  “I just…I want you to know you can always come back.  Because there’s a place for you here, if you want it.”

“If it’s an ‘if’…why am I being forced to make a promise?”

A sharp breath filled Lupin’s lungs.  “I…”  He paused as a cold wave went through him and in response snugged her close, kissing the nape of her neck again.  “I know you, Fujiko. I know you run.”  Her reply was to tense in his arms, as if ready to kick him away and do just that at that very moment.  But he tightened his grip—not on her, but on his own arms that loosely encircled her front.  “So I just want you to know…if you’re afraid to stay, you don’t have to be.  No matter where you want to go, I’ll be here, so we can go there together.  Lovers or not.”  He hid his eyes into the bedding behind her hair, shivering slightly.  “I’m sure we can figure it out together, right?”

They stayed like that for a long while, just breathing and feeling each other’s bodies in the cool ocean air: His heartbeat against her back; her breath against the hair on his arms.

“You think I’m going to abandon you, huh?” she asked into the breeze.  “Just take the money and run one day and never come back.  You really think I’m going to do that to you?”

“No,” Lupin replied gently to her challenge—more calm and kind than anyone ever saw him in public.  The him that kept her coming back for more, which was something she’d never publicly admit to.

“I think you’ll just leave and I’ll never see you again,” he finished.  “The money has nothing to do with it.  I’m worried you won’t give me any warning; that you’ll keep your concerns to yourself for months and years, and then boom, you’ll be gone forever.  And maybe…you’ll hate me for it.”

She was silent, no doubt imagining it.  They both know that it was true.

“So when you have a choice between that and talking to me about it…trust me a little.  That’s all I’m saying.”

Lupin burrowed down into the dark spot between the pillow and her hair, sheltering his eyes.  Yet he also pulled her into him, closing the distance between his entwined arms like a lasso, until they were snug against one another.

But rather than fuss about it, there was silence.  A silence in which Lupin couldn’t bring himself to breathe.  He wondered if she noticed.

After a time, Fujiko’s delicate fingers unraveled from their tight fist and rubbed his arm gently. He hummed appreciatively, and in a moment she brought his hand to her lips and lay a kiss on his folded knuckles.  “All right,” she whispered reluctantly, curling her fingers around his.  “I’ll do my best.”

She gave his fingers another kiss, then tucked their entwined fists against her chest. 

“That’s my girl,” he muttered back, a touch of enthusiasm back in his voice.  She could feel the smile on his face, as he lay a kiss into her hair.

“Now, Lupin,” she said, turning over in his arms to face him.  He made room for her to do so, and soon their lips were only inches apart.  Electricity sparked between them, the cool air replaced with Zeus’s thunder. 

Fujiko’s dark eyes held Lupin’s own. Her upper hand alighted his naked hip under the sheet, eliciting a shiver of excitement from him; her leg threaded between his and was gladly admitted.  His eyes glittered with awareness, and hers sparkled with a smile, proclaiming intent.

“ _Kiss me_.”

A smirk of conquest touched her lips.

And returned on his, as he threaded his hands through her hair and acquiesced: a defeated but hopeful one.

In this, in her, he was happy to be conquered, but he’d climb that hill for her all the same.  She deserved his best attempt too, after all.  

Even if he knew it’d never get him what he wanted the most.

And so he kissed her time and again, for however long she’d let him—forever wondering which would be the last.


End file.
